Tyre manufacturers seem to differentiate products, even within their own product range for application type, i.e.
they describe their tyres as having different driving/grip/wear/noise characterisitcs etc. , so I find it surprising
that some seem so nonchalant about mixing different manufacturers tyres on the same chassis.
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I agree with the OP, and would want same make / spec tyres on the same axle - especially the driven wheels.
I may also want to use tyres with the same amount of wear, again especially on driven wheels.
The handbook may document such requirements, or a dealer may advise.
I think it applies more to high power / high performance cars rather than low power cars.
Can you tell if the tyre caused th accident ? probably not, but it's certainly 'best case' to have both the same.
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Unless you are pushing your tyres to the very limits I don't think you would even know the difference! Even at top end of rallying/racing where a wrong tyre choice can affect the result they only make a difference of 2 or 3 seconds per mile and thats where they are using the tyres to their limits!
It's different if its an ultra performance car; but then the choice of tyres is very limited too.
But wife going to Tesco's, any old tyres surely???? within reason.
Stick to good/ known brands and I would think even a technical specialist woulnt be able to say A tyre was responsible for losing grip/causing accident!
But if peace of mind is important then choose same make as original.
Bear in mind the oe spec on tyres is not just about grip. Its more price/ tyre-life/grip compromise!
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I'm with Yorkiebar - just so long as tyres are legal, meet BS and are the right size I don't give a toss about mixing brands. In 17years of driving it's never caused me a problem. I've found el cheapo tyres to grip just as well as more expensive brands and when you consider that you often need to be driving outside of the law to push tyres to the limit....
Only possible arguement is for grip is during emergency braking, but to be honest you will get more benefit by driving carefully and leaving plently of room/escape route.
At end of day if you want to spend £200 per tyre where I spend £45, then it's your money and your choice. Consider all the arguements posted here and then make your own informed decision, no one has the right answer.
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Be careful about being on same side as me moonshine!
I'm honest john enemy no 1, because I speak my mind too much !
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tyres cost little compared to other service items and, along with brakes, are so crucial to your safety that it is just not worth trying to save a few pennies or pounds.
i always fit the same make all round with the same tread pattern.
i would rather save money on dubious 5000 mile or 10000 mile oil changes ( i do mine at 20000 miles or so when the variable service indicator says it needs doing ). as for the expensive spark plugs in my beemer, the recommended interval (by bmw-users) is 100,000 miles (yes, one hundred thousand miles) and so have been changed once only so far.
but with tyres, i play safe, even though they are £100 a piece. i change them with more than twice the amount of legal tread still left on them.
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On Avon's website it recommends against mixing tyres across an axle:
- having different braking characteristics can be interesting, particularly in the wet
- the tyres will wear at different rates
Barring unrepairable punctures, tyres should wear out at the same time.
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every tyre has a different slip angle
therefore to carry the argument to conclusion suggest OP changes all tyres for new ones before every journey
have a nice day yawl
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What size tyres do you have? Sounds like your junk is my treasure!
Interestingly enough I would never fit part worn tyres unless you know where they have come from. I had a bad experience with part worns which had very badly repaired puncture damage on the side wall. Tyre fitters put them on so the huge bulges in the side wall were to the inside. It was picked up a month later on the MOT, I was quite shocked when I saw them and was seriously pee'd off at being so obviously ripped off by the tyre place. When I went back to demand a refund they had gone out of business, no surprise, but I wonder how many other dangerous tyres they had fitted.
So maybe the government should pass new laws that say we must now have min of 3.2m tread and the same brand all round? Surely if it makes a difference it would be in our interests? How about another law that says we can only fit pirelli as they give the best grip and therefore safety?
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So - if you get a puncture which can't be repaired AND the opposite tyre pattern is no longer in production, do you throw that away as well and buy 2 new tyres?
My insurer's approved repairer recently fitted a Goodyear Excellence to replace an accident damaged Goodyear NCT5 because the NCTs are no longer available in that size.
I can't believe that BR posters are suggesting that this practice is unsatisfactory!
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If people want to bin perfectly good tyres then it's their choice....
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>>I can't believe that BR posters are suggesting....
I've long since stopped being amazed and dumbfounded at just how anal some members of this forum can be.
If tyres have more than the legal limit of tread depth, and are the same size and type across an axle, then it's OK.
I can't imagine there are many cars still running about with cross plies on the front and radials on the back, which *is* a legal combination. I last so a car like this in 1989. Actually, I was assisting during its MOT, and (being much more pedantic than the nominated tester) I noticed that the vehicle's owners had got it back to front, and so, we failed it on this point.
There are two popular reasons for wanting balanced tyres on a car.
1 - If I brake, I want the same levels of grip. OK, but there's no guarantee that the road is going to give you equal levels of grip - leaves, oil, diesel, botched resurfacing repairs, potholes, etc
2 - It will affect handling. Once you are in a corner, each wheel carries a different vertical load, by virtue of lateral load transfer, and, depending upon the anti-roll bar, possibly also longitudinal load transfer. Under these conditions, even nominally identical tyres will be giving a different slip angle vs lateral load characteristic (called cornering stiffness in the vehicle dynamics community). This really is an amplification of the point made by oldman above.
For real exotica, I can see the point of being very fussy about tyre choice, because the handling and steering feedback (or, in the case of some extreme cars the stability of the rear of the car) is important. On these cars, the handling and steering feedback is a large part of their raison d'etre - I'm thinking cars like the Lotus Elise rather than the Ford Focus here!
I can see the point in keeping tyres well balanced if you have sophisticated driveline and dynamic control systems which would be fooled by the fitment of a tyre with, say, a different rolling radius, but this is more a case of keeping the relative tread wear the same, rather than the brand name on the sidewall.
Number_Cruncher
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Number_Cruncher - what an excellent post! Good to see a technical explanation of what most of us already know from experience!
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so can someone non-anal tell me what is the marginal advantage if any of deliberately buying a new tyre that is different to the others (assuming that the same make/model is available) ratehr than insisting on an exact same replacement?
tyres and brakes are the most important components on your car. so it is worth being anal about them and trusting the manufaturers recommendations rather than doing all manner of your own fancy technical load calculations and number crunching. much more important thngs in life to do such as getting a life, than getting all anal and busy and stressed out and amazed and dumbfounded about load transfers.
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Duh??? The point is that there is no need to be anal. If you need a new tyre just make sure its the correct size.
there is no advantage in buying a tyre different to the others (except maybe cost and convienince), just as there is no advantage in buying the same brand. Thats the whole point, it doesn't matter either way. if you want to buy the same then you are no better or worse off.
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>>assuming that the same make/model is available
Yes, that's fair enough - if the tyre place has the same tyre in, you may as well fit one. But, if they haven't got one, in most cases, it's best to simply fit another decent branded tyre, and carry on. It's not something to lose sleep over.
>>tyres and brakes are the most important components on your car
Yes, I agree. Most manufacturers only recommend what sizes of tyre to fit, not what brand - I know some makes, like BMW for example, do recommend specific tyres. Of course, whatever is written in your car's manual should be followed.
>>getting a life
People in glass houses shouldn't throw stones! I don't keep an enyclopaedic record of every back room post in my head ready to be dredged up and linked to in order to make my points!
Number_Cruncher
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One area where having mixed and poor quality tyres WILL make a massive difference to stability and more important predictability of handling is in the wet. Some backroom posters seem to have conveniently forgotten this in their quest to save pennies.
Furthermore I can't believe someone has written off 'braking performance' as inconsequential. Those few meters might be the difference between life and death.
As an aside I noticed the ESP on my Golf IV intervened a lot earlier when running on mixed tyres.
Skimping on tyres is a false economy. That said I don't think you need to be so anal as to have 4 same brand tyres all round unless you are running a car with halfway decent performance. Having 2 same brand on the same axle is common sense IMO.
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One of my favourite annoying things, if that makes sense, was the mix of tyre brands, on the vans we'd sell.
So I'd ensure that we'd always swap around, one make to another, to match up - it'd be rare for us not to have a matching set, on each vehicle, or at least 2 pairs!
This might seem finiky, but it always made the vehicles look better & quite a few customers seemed to appreciate a set of Michelins, or Pirellies, or what ever were their favouirites - we even had instances of changing one make from one van, to the van they were buying!
So can't all be crazy... can we??
But of course, this switch around, in itself may not be the thing to do, as the tyre will have worn to the charecteristic of the vehicle it was fitted. Safest & best practice, is to leave the tyre in the same position, it was originally, for it's life!
VB
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vansboy you might not realise the reason you did this so let me explain-------
Some customers like to see matched tyres on vehicles because it gives them a cuddly blanket thinking that the previous owner has changed tyres in pairs even though only one was probably needed ,its a physcolgical thing, like wearing two pairs of trousers on a golf course in case you get a hole in one.
I do this quite often swapping tyres round ,or if really pushed will fit some remoulds, da"s, or cheapest new.
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1 - If I brake, I want the same levels of grip. OK, but there's no guarantee that the road is going to give you equal levels of grip - leaves,
oil, diesel, botched resurfacing repairs, potholes, etc.
- So, it's ok to exacerbate all the above with different tyres too? Oh, well you pays your money etc.
2 - It will affect handling. Once you are in a corner, each wheel carries a different vertical load, by virtue of lateral load transfer, and, depending upon the anti-roll bar, possibly also longitudinal load transfer. Under these conditions, even nominally identical tyres will be giving a different slip angle vs lateral load characteristic (called cornering stiffness in the vehicle dynamics community). This really is an amplification of the point made by oldman above.
- Ditto above really, with the additions that side-wall deflection differences must be further 'enhanced' with tyre asymmetry too &
different makes/types of the same size are bound to weigh different amounts - think of the magnified differences in
centrifugal forces that generates - and its affect.
I don't drive exoticars, but do corner at 50-70mph sometimes & I want to minimise all the (reasonable) possible variables
that might upset my car's trajectory. So, far from being an anal obsession, I see it as contributing to keeping my anus
(hmmmph!) where it should be.
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>>So, it's ok to exacerbate...
No, what I'm getting at is that you are likely to have a much larger variation in road surfaces than say between, say, the response of equivalent Michelin and a Continental, or most pairings of decent makes of tyre.
OK, you can take this to extremes and put sticky performance tyres on one side, and economy longlife on the other, and that will probably give you odd results - but that's not really what we are talking about here is it?
Once you are cornering, the tyres are loaded in an asymmetric manner anyway, so, what does it matter? In practice, the response of the outer, heavily loaded tyre will tend to dominate as you approach the limit.
If this really were such a hot topic, you would find it would become a legal and insurance company requirement. I suspect it is an insurance company requirement to put the correct tyres on the back axles of things like Porsche 911's, but, I'd call that exotica.
Have you ever heard of an insurance company refusing to pay out on an ordinary car claim because it had an Avon on side, and a Dunlop on the other?
Number_Cruncher
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I always have the same make of tyre on my car, I swap the fronts with the rears to even out wear, so I can buy 4 new ones.
I also wear a matching pair of shoes, it makes me feel better when walking.
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Once you are cornering the tyres are loaded in an asymmetric manner anyway so what does it matter? In practice the response of the outer heavily loaded tyre will tend to dominate as you approach the limit. If this really were such a hot topic you would find it would become a legal and insurance company requirement. I suspect it is an insurance company requirement to put the correct tyres on the back axles of things like Porsche 911's but I'd call that exotica.
Yup all Porsches post 1990 should have N rated tyres, these are tyres specifically tested & approved by Porsche, sometimes different to the non-N rated ones. Porsche do not approve of non-rated tyres & insurance companies in the past have refused to pay out citing "incorrect spec tyres".
Porsche also recommend same make, N number (0-4) all round the car. But we are talking 150MPH+ cars here as a minimum. On your boggo Focus/Astra etc no way would you notice the difference, on a lot of cars FWD in particular you struggle to feel a puncture!
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I never got a straight answer as to the difference between the N rated and non-N varieties of a specific tyre. Some people thought stiffer sidewalls. Any idea ? Or is it just a specific production run which gets certified in some way?
I know I had at one point a mix of N and non N SO2's and the tread pattern and everything else looked the same - apart from the N rating. Given that there was no cost difference between them (I had a puncture and couldnt get the replacements as N for a couple of days and needed the car) I wonder if there is a benefit generally in asking for N rated tyres on any car if the size is available/applicable.
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I never got a straight answer as to the difference between the N rated and non-N varieties of a specific tyre. Some people thought stiffer sidewalls. Any idea ? Or is it just a specific production run which gets certified in some way? I know I had at one point a mix of N and non N SO2's and the tread pattern and everything else looked the same - apart from the N rating. Given that there was no cost difference between them (I had a puncture and couldnt get the replacements as N for a couple of days and needed the car) I wonder if there is a benefit generally in asking for N rated tyres on any car if the size is available/applicable.
I believe sidewall stiffness is some of it & most Pork N rated tyres are those that have stiffer sidewalls anyway such as Bridgestone & Conti's. I believe some of it stems from speed rating as some Porkers were faster than the highest speed rated tyres at the time.
Not sure as to difference to be honest, on my 944 it had old style Conti's on it when I bought it which is an old design. Goodyear F1's made an amazing difference to the handling & steering by simply being a modern design & compound. If I had a Boxster or 911 then I'd worry on the 944 it's pre-N rated so I don't worry!
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NC, yr theoretical side is out of hand on this one. It may be that some roads are patchwork and bumpy, but quite a lot aren't. Anyone who drives at all rapidly wants their tyres to be equivalent, preferably all round. And what this means in practice is the same make and model, because tyres do vary quite a lot between brands as we all know. Nothing anal about it.
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>>NC, yr theoretical side is out of hand on this one.
I think it's a matter of degree Lud.
I fully agree that to get the optimum performance, you need an equivalent set of tyres all round.
On the other hand, I don't accept that a car immediately becomes a lethal death trap with, say, a Pirelli one side and a Kleber on the other.
Number_Cruncher
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On the other hand I don't accept that a car immediately becomes a lethal death trap with say a Pirelli one side and a Kleber on the other.
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Neither do I, of course. Indeed probably driven more vehicles with an assortment than others!
By the way, I like to know how things work too (but can't really cope with electronics).
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don't keep an enyclopaedic record of every back room post in my head
unfortunately or fortunately some people are blessed or cursed with such powers, depending on one's point of view at a given time, whether they want these powers or not. just a fact of nature about which nothing apart from suicide will cure.
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A fair number of years ago drove back from Plymouth to the NE. Next morning one front tyre totally flat - so I was lucky a puncture did not become a blow-out. It was a lease vehicle and I called them and a mobile fitter semt.
He was instructed to fit a new tyre and that was it. When I said I was not happy a new tyre was fitted to one side and the other needed replacing in the next 1000-2000 miles I was told that was what he was allowed to do. Phoned the lease firm and explained why unhappy (other front tyre close to needing replacing too but not illegal) and they said words to the effect "that's how it is". In my situation previous tyres were directional tread, so asked if they would standby this decision if there was an accident. Within a minute they backed down. If the tread depth was similar I had little issue (directional tread aside).
End result two tyres of the same design/tread etc.
They did try, as lease companies do, to say, "swap the spare"... but even with an alloy spare you cannot put directional wheel as a spare. Learning how they worked, my current car has a space saver spare. Better than a can of "goo" and stops them near end of contract using the spare.
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I've always bought tyres in pairs, mainly because they tend to wear out in pairs! I buy cheap tyres too because on a Nissan Almera with a top speed of 110mph, which requires H-rated tyres anyway, I can't imagine that I would ever push any tyre to its limit. I've found that they last just as long as brand-names too - once had a pair of Pirellis that did just 12k before getting down to the legal limit. Currently on Hankooks all round and after 3,000 miles they still look brand-new.
Basically, don't buy hugely expensive tyres. Taxi drivers usually fit rubbish to their cars, and I've never seen a taxi with a blow-out or puncture despite the starship-enterprise mileage they do. Incidentally my neighbour used to run a tyre workshop, and his car currently has 3 different brands of tyres, which only get replaced when they fail the MOT! He obviously has a bit more faith in his tyres than the pedants in the backroom do.
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>>some people are blessed or cursed...
For me, the blessing or curse is not being able to pass something by without thinking about how it works - and in many annoying cases not being happy until having taken said item apart!
Number_Cruncher
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For me, the blessing or curse is not being able to pass something by without thinking about how it works
strangely for me it is when something i own stops working that i find i must know why it failed and how i should be able to fix it myself rather than allow someone else to do it for me. i have no such problem when the item is not owned by me.
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